Trustee – voluntary
Closing: 01/08/2025
Trustees – Evolve Counselling CIO (1181861)
Application process: Please email projectssupport@evolvecounselling.org.uk with your CV and letter of application, stating why you’d like to become a Trustee at Evolve Counselling and how your skills and experience align with our plans for growth.
• Location: remote/Cambridgeshire area
• Voluntary role: reasonable expenses paid
• Time commitment: 0-5 hours per month (estimated), mostly outside office hours
• Term: negotiable, e.g. interim/three years/extendable by re-election
The Role:
Dynamic Trustees needed, with charity and commercial skills, to support mental health CIO.
With an ambitious development programme up and running, we need to expand our Trustee Board. This is an exciting opportunity to join us at a crucial time of growing demand for our services.
About Us:
Evolve Counselling is a long-established charitable social enterprise, providing low cost, affordable or funded mental health counselling to adults in mainly Cambridgeshire and surrounding counties. Our counselling community is made up of 50 – 60 qualified self-employed practitioners, working part-time. We deliver talking therapies to adults – online and in person. Our service delivers around 500 counselling sessions per month to a broad range of individuals, many of whom would not otherwise be able to access counselling support. Evolve also provides supervision, reflective practice, critical incident support, and mental health awareness and related training, to organisations and businesses large and small.
What We’re Looking For:
Our Trustee Board is currently drawn from the counselling and therapies community, plus commercial and other charity backgrounds. Now, with crucial development of the CIO ahead, we are looking for new members to expand the Board to its maximum ten places and to gain skills and insight from an equal, diverse and inclusive group that takes in business skills, knowledge of charities, and experience of not-for-profit finances to make growth plans a reality.
The Board will keep us on track with good governance through oversight of our work and will also help our keen new CEO to secure a sound financial base from which to grow our operations to meet the ever-increasing demand for our services.
We welcome applications from individuals with backgrounds in any of the following areas:
• Business strategy and planning
• Commerce/industry
• Governance
• Working within the charity/CIO sector
• Financial management
• Legal expertise
• Health and wellbeing services
• Mental health counselling
• Health service commissioning or delivery planning
• Advocacy or advice services
• Data protection/GDPR knowledge
• Adherence to the Nolan Principles of Public Life
The general duties of a trustee are as follows:
• Ensuring that the charity pursues its stated objects (purposes), as defined in its governing document, by developing and agreeing a long-term strategy and evaluating the CIO’s performance against agreed targets
• Ensuring that the charity complies with its governing document, charity law, company law and any other relevant legislation or regulations
• Ensuring that the charity applies its resources exclusively in pursuance of its charitable objects for the benefit of the public
• Safeguarding the good name and values of the charity and ensuring its financial stability
• Ensuring the effective and efficient administration of the charity, including having appropriate policies and procedures in place and reviewing them regularly
• Protecting and managing the property of the charity and ensuring the proper investment of the charity’s funds
• Ensure all Trustees are committed to Nolan’s seven principles of public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership
• Voluntary attendance at all necessary meetings of the Board such as general Meetings, AGMs, Committees, and any events that promote or advance the CIO and its cause.
The general person specification of a trustee is as follows:
• A commitment to the charity
• A willingness to devote the necessary time and effort
• Strategic vision
• Good, independent judgement
• An ability to think creatively
• A willingness to speak their mind constructively and respectfully
• An understanding and acceptance of the legal duties, responsibilities and liabilities of trusteeship
• An ability to work effectively as a member of a team
• Demonstrate commitment to Nolan’s seven principles of public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership